Friday, May 8, 2009

The High of Being Nice

Psychologists have long wondered what motivates people to be nice. Now American researches have found that cooperating with another persons activates the pleasure centers of the brain, the same parts that are stimulated by rewards like food or money. The scientists used magnetic resonance imaging to scan the brains of 36 women while they played the “prisoner's dilemma game,” a decades-old model for conflict and cooperation. Two players independently chose to either band together or defect. If they cooperated, they each earned $2; if both defected, each got $1. but if one cooperated and one defected, the defector was paid $3 and the cooperator got nothing. The researcher found that most of the time the women chose to cooperate. Whenever they did work together, the scientist could see stimulation in two parts of the brain associated with the pleasure. “this suggests that people find it rewarding to cooperate with each other”, says neuro scientist Greggory berns,”mutual small acts of kindness really do make you feel better”.

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